Prior art of relevance to the present invention includes U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/453,207, directed to absorbable, essentially non-absorbable and non-absorbable, crystalline, amphiphilic block/graft compositions having an inherent viscosity of at least 0.5 dL/g, and a heat of fusion of at least 10 J/g, that undergo swelling in the biological environments due to a water uptake of at least 10 percent of the original mass. These compositions were designed for use in swellable surgical sutures, coatings, and carriers for the delivery of bioactive agents. Related to this was a subsequent disclosure (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/820,849) which dealt with biomedical and tissue engineering devices (such as surgical sutures and microporous scaffolds, respectively), which undergo swelling and increase in dimensions when placed in aqueous environments, such as living tissues, that are produced by the melt-spinning or electrostatic spinning as strong monofilament and multifilament yarns or microfibrous fabrics, respectively. It was also disclosed that such devices are formed from especially high molecular weight crystalline polyether-esters having a minimum inherent viscosity of 0.8 dL/g, wherein the polyether-esters are made by grafting a polyester segment or block to a polyether glycol component having a minimum molecular weight of 11 kDa with at least one cyclic monomer.
The parent application to this invention (U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/596,545 and PCT/U.S. application Ser. No. 06/22,971) is directed to bioswellable sutures in the forms of absorbable monofilaments of an amphiphilic copolyester, an absorbable multifilament braid, a non-absorbable multifilament braid with an absorbable monofilament core of an amphiphilic copolymer and a non-absorbable multifilament braid molecularly integrated with an outer sheath that is highly hydrophilic.
Analysis of the prior art discussed above and related art did not reveal any teaching dealing with (1) coated sutures that are swellable due to, at least in part, a swellable polymeric coating thereon; (2) swellable coating on swellable sutures where the fibrous component of the suture comprises absorbable and non-absorbable yarns; and (3) swellable coating on non-absorbable sutures or silk. Similarly, swellable sutures comprising a swellable and non-swellable fibrous component could not be found in the prior art. Failure of the prior art to deal with or make it obvious to conceive these unreported, novel features of swellable, coated sutures provided an incentive to pursue the study subject of the instant invention.